A/N: This story is a sequel to my earlier story 'Kill Zone'. Read it here: s/11513657/1/Kill-Zone
A hooded figure ran down an empty street, his footsteps ringing out as his boots slapped through a multitude of murky, muddy puddles. The man's breath was heavy and laboured, and he stopped a moment to check over his shoulder and catch his breath. When he was satisfied that he had lost his pursuers he reached down to his belt and removed a small, silver disc from a leather pouch. The disc was only a few centimetres in diameter, with a button set into the centre of the smooth metal. He pressed the button and raised the disc to his mouth.
"This is no use. I can't get in, the house is too heavily guarded. They've got Ogrons now, patrolling the perimeter fence. We need a new strategy."
There was a moment, fleeting but long enough for the hooded man's paranoia to make him check his surroundings again for anything chasing him.
"They know what I look like now, they'll send someone for us. We need to change safe houses again."
The disc chirruped.
"That's not good enough. They bombed the last one, thank god we got out in time. We're not secure, we need to move."
The disc beeped in annoyance.
"Stop it, and do as I say. Run the relocation program, let's say the clock tower. Start setting up the defences, and quickly, we haven't got much time."
The disc whirred for a few seconds before pinging.
"We need a new infiltration strategy now as well, I've just buggered the last one."
The disc vibrated in his hand. The man's face creased in annoyance.
"Don't be ridiculous, he'd never help us, not after the last time."
The disc ran out a string of numbers.
"I don't like those odds. Besides, we have no way to get a message to him. He probably wouldn't even respond."
The disc beeped sharply, and the man covered it with his hands in an effort to muffle the noise. He glanced around furtively, worried that his pursuers would have caught up with him by now. The street was still empty, and so the hooded man turned his attention back to the disc.
"What do you have in mind?"
The disc relayed the information into the man's neural implants. He mulled over the ideas and it was several minutes before he spoke again.
"It's a long shot. It probably wouldn't work."
The disc hummed softly.
"You're absolutely right, of course. We don't have a choice. Start looking - a TARDIS can't be that hard to track down. We'll have the Doctor here by morning."
The TARDIS was usually a quiet, peaceful environment, at least when there were no noisy humans running about the place and disrupting everything. The Doctor liked to talk aloud when he was theorising and he couldn't very well do that if he had to contend with any of the normal thrumming and wheezing of the engines. As such, the TARDIS kept the sound of its engines to a minimum in the console room, allowing only small gusts of sound into the control room and the surrounding corridors as a reminder that the ship was actually going somewhere. Of late, however, the Doctor was intent on shattering that carefully maintained peace and quiet, much to the TARDIS' chagrin.
The Doctor stood on the balcony, his guitar slung low. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the sonic sunglasses. He tapped the bridge between the lenses and pushed them up on to his nose. A low warble started up, and the Doctor looked down at the console, where a few lights came on on the nearest panel. Then he lifted his plectrum, and strummed a chord.
The signal travelled from the guitar to the console. From there, the signal was sent to another new addition to the console room: the array of roundels built into the walls of the control room. At last he'd found a use for the things - concealed amplifiers. The chord rang out loud into the control room from all sides, disrupting the precisely controlled quiet. The Doctor strummed again, and smiled as the power chord played out again from the roundels.
The Doctor had spent so long on Earth and with humans; it seemed only natural that some of their music might have made a home in his head - this incarnation seemed to have a predilection for earworms. He began playing, properly now, rather than just single chords, a whole string of them, bound carefully and expertly into a symphony, simple notes bound into a complex melody. He didn't even know what the song's name was, he just knew it from Clara's phone - she was forever plugging it into the TARDIS' console.
A light was flashing on the console, just beside the telephone unit. The Doctor stopped playing and set the guitar on a stand by his armchair. This was no doubt the TARDIS registering it's protest at the, frankly rude, interruptions to her efforts to provide him with a peaceful environment in which he could conduct his studies into whichever notion took him at a given time. The Doctor pocketed the sonic glasses as he approached the console. He pushed the button beside the light and turned to the scanner, preparing himself for whatever scolding the TARDIS had prepared for him.
The message scrolling out on the screen was short and presumably to the point. The Doctor began reading, his eyebrows beginning to crease. This wasn't a reprimand from the TARDIS, this was something else. The message was a single line in length, a set of space-time coordinates and a smiley face on the end.
"It could be a trap," said the Doctor, as he looked up at the time rotor. The TARDIS beeped in response, a raised eyebrow of sorts, or as close as the TARDIS could muster without resorting to psychic messaging. She already knew he was going to follow the trail.
"I know, I know," the Doctor muttered as he made his way around the console to the dematerialisation lever. He gripped it tightly, before pulling back. The TARDIS engines struck up their wheezing, orchestral thrumming as the ship dove through the Time Vortex, dodging past all the wonders and horrors of the cosmos. The TARDIS landed and the noises ceased with a deep thud.
The TARDIS door opened and the Doctor leaned out into the cool night air. He took a step forward, his boot squelching down into some dirty, half-melted snow. He'd landed in a narrow lane, bounded on each side by tall, sad-looking houses. Oil lamps hung from the grey bricks, casting a dirty light down into the street. The lane was devoid of life save for the Doctor. The Doctor looked up to the sky, which was decidedly not that of Earth. A huge nebula spiralled across the sky, tentacles of purple, green and blue feeling their way around the heavens. It was a gorgeous sight, and not one that the Doctor recognised.
There was a splash to the Doctor's right, a little way down the lane. A cloaked figure stepped out of a shadowed alcove and into the street, having just stepped in one of the numerous puddles. The Doctor couldn't make out the stranger's face beneath the hood, but he could see part of a leather gun belt through a parting in the man's cloak, no doubt holstering a blaster somewhere beneath the folds of black cloth.
"You came," said the stranger. The man's voice was familiar to the Doctor, but he couldn't quite place it. The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS fully, gently closing the door to his time machine behind him.
"You sent the message?" The Doctor asked. The stranger nodded, the tip of his hood dipping a little.
"Why?" The Doctor was tense, ready to jump back inside the TARDIS as fast as possible. The stranger approached and the Doctor tightened his grip on the TARDIS' door handle.
"I mean you no harm," the stranger reached up to his hood and curled his fingers around the edges of the black material. He swept his arms back, revealing a mop of blond hair and a young man's face.
"You?" The Doctor exclaimed, his eyebrows going up in shock. He stood away from the TARDIS, letting go of the door handle.
"Hello Doctor. It's been a long time," Neos said. The assassin had changed in the time since the Doctor had last seen him; he was thinner, and his face was harder, leaner, more drawn. He had lost his old flight jumpsuit and was now clad in a simple black tunic and battered combat trousers.
"I need your help," Neos asked, moving towards the Doctor with his hands held out in a pleading fashion.
"Excuse me?" Asked the Doctor. Neos' face was anxious and paranoid, his eyes flicking furtively between the Doctor and the street beyond the TARDIS.
"I need your help with something. You have to come with me," said Neos as he gestured down the street behind him.
"Why should I help you? The last time we met, you tried to kill me," the Doctor pointed out. Neos shook his head.
"Then I helped you, remember? Doctor, we have to go. We haven't got much time," he pleaded. "They could be here at any moment."
"Who's 'they'?" Asked the Doctor.
"Come with me, and I'll tell you," Neos responded. The Doctor hesitated, briefly thinking of just getting back into the TARDIS and leaving. Then he thought of Davros, and how much damage had been caused by his running away then.
"Fine. But you had better have a very good reason for this."
Neos nodded his thanks, and turned away as he pulled his hood up again. The Doctor followed, leaving the TARDIS behind in the lane.
A/N: Please leave a review, it helps so much to keep me writing. The character of Neos is owned by my brother. This was originally intended as a Christmas special for 2015, but I couldn't get the ending just as I wanted.